"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"
As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the time when Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and they drank together to madame's complete restoration.
Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace wall, fishing for cray-fish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.
"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at restaurants."
But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this joke—
"It's goodness strikes the eye!"
He was, in fact, a good fellow, and one day he was not even scandalised at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor, Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature.
But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of pleasure, taught virtue.
"Castigat ridendo mores, Monsieur Bournisien! Thus, consider the greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with philosophical reflections, that make them a very school of morals and diplomacy for the people."
"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the end——"